Unlocking the power of peer review: activating inner feedback through multiple comparisons.
Abstract
While the idea that students should be active agents in feedback processes is gaining ground, there is still very little research on internal feedback, the feedback that students generate themselves, as they monitor and regulate their own learning. This article re-examines this concept and devises a practical model to be used to improve inner feedback generation. Following this a peer review implementation was designed from an inner feedback perspective. The unique feature of the study was that inner feedback was strengthened and make explicit by cueing students to write out their responses to some reflective questions after each peer review. The findings from this investigation throw new light on inner feedback processes. One finding was that students generate a level of feedback elaboration that went beyond what a teacher could provide and that this feedback was valid, meaning it was an accurate judgement of weaknesses in their work and of how these might be addressed. [need to re-write this more as per the REAP examples and not as a research paper.
At a Glance
| Subject: | Accountancy and Finance - Level 1 |
| Class/course: | Accountancy |
| Students: | 139 first year students |
| Technology | AROPA |
| Assessment and Feedback Activities: | Students reviewed and wrote feedback comments on three peer essays, one of which was a high-quality essay from a past student. Immediately after this, students self-reviewed their own work using a feedback script that asked them to identify how the peer work and their own differed, what they learned from this and which was better. |
| Efficiencies: | The students provided more that 3 times more feedback for themselves than any teacher would provide including feedback on the argument in the essay an area where teacher feedback is often not very effective. There was no teacher feedback. |
| Learning Benefits: | The feedback students generated was compared against teacher feedback and was shown that most identified all weaknesses that the teacher identified, that the feedback was far more detailed and at a much higher level than teacher feedback. Not only this but by reviewing many examples students learned from both high and low quality works. Students of all ability level generated feedback relevant to their own level of performance. |
Staff Involved
Suzanne McCallum, Senior Lecturer, Adam Smith Business School, Accountancy and Finance
David Nicol, Research Professor, Teaching Excellence Initiative, Adam Smith Business School
Relationship of project to assessment and feedback principles
This relates to principles ...
Improvements suggested by A&F Principles
Further work envisaged
Published paper or report
Links to related literature (published or otherwise), websites and anything else